Utah Travel Headlines

Monday, September 06, 2010

Flaming Gorge Over Labor Day Weekend

I’m just back from an enjoyable trip to Flaming Gorge, where we boated and fished and had fun soaking up the sunshine.

Flaming Gorge is a massive reservoir that startles the Utah/Wyoming border, on the edge of the Uinta Mountains north of Vernal. On the Utah side the reservoir has inundated steep-walled canyons, with a pine forest coming down to the water’s edge. It is a very beautiful area.

The water is deep and blue and cool - an ideal playground during warm weather. It is a popular place to boat, ski, wakeboard and swim.

The reservoir is also a great fishery, and that is why we were there. We fished hard and enjoyed excellent action for rainbow trout. We also caught kokanee salmon and smallmouth bass.

Flaming Gorge offers trophy-sized lake trout – the record fish caught there weighed over 51 pounds. The big lake trout are hard to find and catch, and we did not target them on this trip.

We knew there would be crowds at the lake’s bigger marinas over the holiday weekend and so we camped and launched at Sheep Creek. That was a good decision – launching conditions were excellent and there was not a line at the ramp. Only a few people were camping there – we did not have any trouble finding a spot in a nearby campground.

Boat traffic was heavy on the lake but that did not interfere with our fishing. How many did we catch? I honestly lost count. We probably boated about 20 rainbows and lost several more at the boat. We also caught 4 kokanee and a half-dozen bass.